A conservative watchdog group filed a Freedom of Information Lawsuit against the FBI seeking information about two bureau officials it accuses of being “spies” for former FBI Director James Comey in the White House.
The American Center for Law and Justice, headed by Trump attorney Jay Sekulow, announced on its website Wednesday that the FBI missed a deadline to respond to its July FOIA request and filed its lawsuit in Washington, D.C. The lawsuit seeks a wide array of records, including “all” of Comey’s emails from April 1, 2016, to May 31, 2017.
“If these Deep State agencies will not comply with the law until a federal court forces them to, then we’ll keep filing federal lawsuits and taking them to court,” the group said in a statement.
The FBI declined to comment.
The FOIA request was made following a report by RealClearInvestigations that explored possible misconduct by Comey for what two U.S. officials described as essentially “running a covert operation against” President Trump starting in 2017 even as he was assuring Trump he was not the subject of any investigation.
[Related: DOJ inspector general: Comey ‘violated’ FBI rules]
The report said longtime FBI official Anthony Ferrante worked as a cybersecurity adviser on the National Security Council and was sharing information about Trump and his aides back to FBI headquarters. Ferrante, who after leaving the government joined business-advising firm FTI Consulting was hired by BuzzFeed to verify parts of British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s anti-Trump dossier, now may be tied to an investigation into alleged surveillance abuses by the DOJ and the FBI being conducted by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz.
After Ferrante left the White House job in April 2017, he was replaced by another FBI official, Jordan Rae Kelly, who signed security logs for Ferrante to enter the White House while he was contracted by BuzzFeed. Kelly left the White House last year and also joined FTI Consulting.
“The indications are those individuals were reporting directly back to James Comey,” Sekulow said on Fox News late Wednesday. “So what he did was he took counterintelligence investigation that was taking place during the presidential campaign, brought it into the White House when the president was sworn in as no longer president-elect but in fact as president.”
“We are going to know a lot more now that a lawsuit is filed,” he added.
